Currently reading Project Hail Mary as the film comes out this Friday over here. No chance in finishing it in time for the release but so far pretty interesting. Unfortunately time is not my friend. If I wasn't so busy I could take the time to really hunker down with a glass of bourbon and relax.
Having been buying a shed load of books of late but in typical fashion I haven't the time to enjoy them. I might be mental.
Chicago: Yearning for quieter times.
Excellent book.
I just read The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss on a friend's recommendation, it was terrific. I'm really into fantasy stuff right now.
Fantastic book. Rothfuss’s poetic prose is beautiful. But be warned: he’s even worse than GRRM at finishing the series—I’ve been waiting for book three for 15-odd years! I don’t think we’ll ever see it.
I have the name of the wind on my reading list as I own that too. Trying top mix it up with Fantasy, fiction, non-fiction, history, biography etc. I own a ridiculous number of print books that I sort of have a library in my house. Kind of cool. Just got to keep on top of making sure I know where everything is.
When things slow down or I actually manage to go on holiday then I will have book fest.
Chicago: Storing for a rainy day.
I just finished reading a lot of Len Deighton books. Still have five to read as they weren't available on Kindle so old fashioned paperbacks are waiting. I love a cold war spy thriller and the plots are great; far superior to the Bond books IMHO. Hearing that he'd died the other day, I figured I must have been in some way responsible.
Anyway, on to Dashiell Hammett. I've finished the Continental Ops books and am now working my way through Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon is a masterpiece and the short stories are also very readable. Similar to Raymond Chandler but set around San Francisco instead of LA. Hammett is contemporaneous with Chandler and I really enjoy books set around that period in California.
I need to try more Hammett. I liked what I read (Falcon and some of the short stories). I found Chandler fantastic and I also like the James Ellroy LA noir books I’ve read. I found it interesting that the widely derided True Detective Season 2 cribbed a lot from The Big Nowhere.
Recently read The Prestige which was good if wildly different from the film.
Currently reading The Handmaid’s Tale as I’m having my AP Lit class read it (or at least pretend to, the workshy shits).
Edit to add that I should try Deighton at some point. I like a lot of Fleming but it’s slight. And The Spy Who Loved Me novel was fucking terrible.
As a quick aside, I assume every character in the Chandler and Hammett books died of lung cancer around ten years later. Sam Spade seems to be rolling a cigarette in just about every other paragraph. By Deighton's time, the characters all seem to be trying to give up.
